Tag Archives: THQ

Lawyers, man: even when a company is dead and gone, they’ll still defrib it one more time in order to squeeze out another lawsuit. Six months prior to THQ declaring bankruptcy, the publisher transferred the UFC license to rival publisher Electronic Arts. That deal set EA back $10 million. As a result, we now have EA Sports UFC (above) heading to next-gen consoles around March to April next year.

Now, however, there’s a problem because THQ is claiming that EA and Zuffa (the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship) colluded to bring about the transfer. It does sound a little like sour grapes, but THQ has some pretty hefty allegations levelled at EA and Zuffa.

According to THQ’s court documents, the publisher began looking for outside buyers for the UFC license as far back as 2011. By that stage it was clear to THQ that some tumultuous financial waters were ahead. One such company that began negotiations for the UFC license was EA. During negotiations, THQ divulged internal sales figures and data on the UFC franchise. Negotiations between the two publishers ended shortly after that, but soon after negotiations ended, Zuffa approached THQ saying they wished to terminate their license agreement. The reason for Zuffa wanting to terminate the agreement was because of THQ’s financial troubles, which THQ alleges Zuffa couldn’t have known unless EA had divulged the financial information to Zuffa.

In January this year, Sega bought Relic and its Company of Heroes IP from the rotting corpse of THQ. By that stage, THQ the publisher had been dead for quite a while, and the choice morsels of valuable developers and franchises were being picked off through assets auctions. Sega went on to publish Company of Heroes 2 a few weeks ago.

The day after THQ filed for bankruptcy (which was on 19 December 2012), Valve paid them $941,710.93 for the pre-orders of Company of Heroes 2 that were made through Steam. That amount is from 20, 755 Steam pre-orders (which mean, if you were wondering, that Valve pockets just less than $15 per pre-order; but that’s just really an aside for interest’s sake). Sega is claiming that that amount of $941,710.93 is actually owed to them, and THQ needs to pay up.

Sega filed the claim on 2 July 2013, so this is still in the early stages. It’ll be interesting to see what happens considering that payment from Valve came after bankruptcy filing. It’ll also be interesting to see whether THQ coughs up considering, you know, they’re bankrupt and Sega is one company in a long line of creditors all clamouring for money from THQ.

Wow, this has just become increasingly messy over the years. First, some background: Patrice Désilets is the creator and designer behind the Assassin’s Creed series – you know, Ubisoft’s most successful and lucrative IP to date. In 2010, Désilets left Ubisoft and at the time it was believed he did so because he wasn’t happy with the direction the AC franchise was heading – you know, the whole annualised releases thing. Désilets departed Ubisoft Montréal and ended up working at THQ Montréal.

During his time at THQ Montréal, Désilets was working on two games that had working titles of 1666 and Underdog. Very little is known about these games, but you can guess what happened next: THQ imploded and the now dead publisher began offloading studios and IPs. Ubisoft acquired THQ Montréal along with 170 members of its staff and all the games it was working on – yes, including Désilets and his two new games 1666 and Underdog. It must have been a slightly awkward “homecoming”. Regardless, there was no concrete evidence on whether Désilets would slot back into Assassin’s Creed development or if he would continue work on his other two games.

The remainder of THQ’s intellectual properties have been purchased by publisher Nordic Games. The Swedish company is known for bringing Alan Wake to the PC as well as Painkiller: Resurrection. You might also know of them via their occasional publishing label of JoWood Entertainment.

Shortly after the purchase was made public, Nordic Games started a new forum asking fans for feedback on what they would like to see happen to the various IPs. One “fan” to respond to the Darksiders thread was Ryan Stefanelli, the principal designer for Darksiders and co-founder of the series’ original developers Vigil Games. Awkward…

Relic held the license from Games Workshop to develop the incredibly good Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War series of RTS games. That deal was alive and kicking when Relic was still owned by THQ; they were busy making Dawn of War 3 and at one point it was due for release sometime between August 2012 and February 2013. Now that THQ is dead, and Relic is owned by Sega, the Dawn of War license agreement has kind of disappeared.

When Sega acquired Relic, they also acquired IPs that Relic had worked on, namely Company of Heroes. When pressed for comment about the Dawn of War IP, Sega kept quiet and Relic’s game director Quinn Duffy maintains that he is “still a bit fuzzy on that”. Despite this apparent AWOL state that Dawn of War finds itself in, Duffy sounds adamant that Relic will be given the green light by Games Workshop once again.

“Dawn of War, because it’s a license and it’s owned by Games Workshop, they have the opportunity to work that license with whoever they want,” he told Eurogamer. “I would hope it would be us again. We had a great working relationship with Games Workshop.”